I think it must be around two years ago that we started down the Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) road. At the time there was an expectation that the whole thing could be done and dusted within a year. How wrong we were! For the last couple of years a team of volunteers have been working on developing the policies needed for the plan. This has involved a lot of toing and froing between TDC and the NDP team and there have been many drafts and re-drafts.

We have now reached the stage where the narrative of the plan has largely now been agreed with TDC. Graphics and various supporting documents need to be added to bring the application to pre-submission stage. At that point a draft NDP will be delivered to every household in the parish giving residents the opportunity to comment on the plan. When the closing date for public feedback is reached the NDP team will need to list each contribution received and either adopt the suggestion or give reasons for rejecting it. After that the plan will be submitted to an examiner who will check if the plan complies with statutory legislation. The next step will be for the final version of the NDP to be published and a local referendum called. Provided that the plan achieves a simple majority in this referendum then it would have legal status. This is important because the Chudleigh NDP will need to be taken into account when planning applications are being considered. If and when we have a local NDP we will then receive 25% of the Community Infrastructure levy (CIL) generated by developments in Chudleigh, rather than the 10% we receive now.